This story pretty
much developed out of one line, and that being said by Dash Baxter:
What'd you do to get like that? Or something of the like and it
kinda just developed into this little ((cough) understatement
(cough)) fic.

-----------------

Old Scars

It started off like any
other normal day for 17 year old Daniel Fenton, Danny to his friends
and family. But 'normal' is for Danny is not 'normal' for
us. He had changed over the years, growing taller and more muscular
from his ghost fighting, and wore now a red, short sleeved shirt with
a white, long sleeved shirt underneath. (A/N: It's one of those
shirts that has the long sleeves sewn into the short sleeves, so
technically it's only one shirt.) He still wore his signature
blue jeans and red sneakers.

He walked towards
Casper High, where he was currently a senior, but stopped suddenly
when his breath suddenly appeared in front of him. He gasped,
ducking into a nearby alleyway and going ghost.

Leaving his backpack
abandoned in the alley, he soared above the buildings, scanning the
skyline when suddenly—

Danny sighed and
spotted said ghost further down the street. Flying over to the Box
Ghost, Danny stopped in front of him, crossing his arms over his
chest. "You know, we go through the same thing every time, why do
you keep coming back?" he asked, his voice clearly showing his
irritation.

"Do not try and stop
me Danny Phantom! For this time, I shall rule the world of cardboard
boxes! Fear the wrath of—" he paused and looked at the boxes
that he had hovered over to him. "Two percent Choc. Milk!"

"Oh God," Danny
groaned, rolling his head around. The boxes flew at him. He turned
intangible and they went right through him, bouncing harmlessly
behind him on the ground. He shot off two ecto-blasts out of his
index fingers which hit the two boxes that the Box Ghost had just
levitated behind him. Danny sent off another shot which hit the Box
Ghost in the chest.

"Beware!" the ghost
yelled. Danny sighed again and unclipped the Fenton Thermos from his
belt and sucked the harmless ghost into the swirling blue vortex.

"You have not seen
the last of me Danny Phantom!" the Box Ghost yelled as he was
sucked up.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah,"
Danny muttered as he flew back into the alley he had left his
backpack in. He transformed back into his human self and grabbed his
backpack, leaving the alley and continuing on his way to school.

He walked into the
school and to his locker, greeting his two best friends as he did so,
"Hey Sam, hey Tuck." Samantha Manson, Sam to her friends, and
Tucker Foley were waiting by his locker, like they were every
morning.

They, too, had changed
throughout the years. Sam was still Goth in her ways, wearing black
hip huggers, and a dark blood red, short sleeved shirt that showed
off her naval. She still wore her favorite combat boots, just incase
someone needed their asses kicked. She had grown too, but was now
shorter than Danny and Tucker by a head. Her curves had filled out
too, making her the object of many boys' affections, not that she
returned any.

Tucker was still a
geek, carrying too many techno-geek accessories for his own good. He
wore a green, short sleeved shirt with tan cargo pants and black
sneakers. He had gotten rid of his glasses in sophomore year, and
had gotten contacts. The red beret still graced his head though. He
had shot up during their junior year and was just short of six feet.

"You look like death;
did you run in with something this morning?" Sam asked, raising an
eyebrow.

"Ha, ha," he
laughed mockingly. "It was just the Box Ghost. He's really
starting to get on my nerves."

"Yeah, it's just—"
Danny started but was cut off by a yell down the hall.

"FENTON!" yelled
the school's number one bully, Dash Baxter.

Danny sighed for the
third time that morning and shut his locker, walking in the opposite
direction that the yell had come from. But he wasn't lucky enough
to avoid Dash and ended up pushed up against the lockers.

"When I call you,
dweeb, you don't ignore me!" Dash said angrily to Danny. Danny
pushed away from Dash, not wanting to deal with him right then, and
started to walk again down the hall. "Don't walk away from me!"
Dash yelled, grabbing the back of Danny's shirt. Little did he
know that he had grabbed too hard.

There was a loud rip
that rang through the hall, stopping all conversation and turning
everyone's attention towards the two. Dash held the back of
Danny's shirt in his hand, though not paying attention to it.

Danny groaned and
pulled the front of his shirt off, no sense in still keeping it on.
Everyone in the hall gasped when they caught sight of him. They were
shocked. They didn't know whether to be mortified or amazed at the
sight. Sure Danny was ripped with a nice six pack, but he was
covered in old pink scars. Some big, some small, but no matter, they
were all over.

"God, Fenton, what'd
you do to get like that?" Dash asked, eyes wide at all of the
scars, most of which looked like they had been painful lacerations.

"Wouldn't you like
to know?" Sam said angrily, stepping up to grab Danny by the arm.
She pulled him away, the people that had gathered, parting like the
Red Sea and staring openly. Sam dragged him down to the boy's
locker room. "Go get your gym shirt," she told him.

He gave a grateful
(A/N: That's spelt right, just so you know. Yeah, it confused
me too. I was like why is it that grate instead of the other great?
It'd make more sense…but then this is the English language)
smile and shuffled into the room. He walked over to his gym locker
and opened it up, grabbing his gym shirt out of there and slipping it
on.

He walked out of the
locker room and into the hall, where Tucker and Sam were waiting for
him. "Hey, man, it's not that bad," Tuck immediately said
after he came out. "Maybe now you won't get picked on."

"Yeah, but this is
why I started to wear long sleeved shirts," Danny said
thoughtfully, looking down at his arms. They were riddled with
scars, big and small, just like the rest of him. "I didn't want
them to start thinking that this was my parents' doing."

"Let's just go to
class," Sam interjected. "If they ask anything about your
parents, we can always vouch for them, and for you."

Danny gave her a
heartfelt smile. "Thanks Sam." They started down the hall
towards their first class, English with Mr. Lancer. All the while,
Danny was getting stared at and whispered about. The rumors had only
just begun.

They arrived at their
English class and sat in their normal seats until Mr. Lancer came in.
"Mr. Fenton, would you please come with me, there is something
that I'd like to discuss with you," he said. All eyes in the
class were on him.

Danny sighed deeply and
got up, Sam and Tucker getting up with him. "I said Mr. Fenton
only Miss Manson and Mr. Foley, and I mean only him," Mr. Lancer
said pointedly.

"You're going to
make false accusations, don't think we don't know, and don't
think we won't try and get those ridiculous lies out of your head!"
Sam said angrily, not sitting back down.

"We're only going
to ask him a few questions, which I'm sure that he can answer
without your help. I will be back in a little while class." And
with that, he left the room. Danny turned towards Sam, who started
after him, and shook his head. She glared at him but sat back down.
Tucker gave him a pat on the back and sat back down too.

Danny walked out of the
class, all eyes on him, and met Mr. Lancer out in the hall. He
followed him down to the nurse's office and followed in afterwards.
The nurse was there, along with the principle, Principle Ishiyama.

"Now Danny," the
nurse started, "I'd like you to take off your shirt." Danny
sighed, knowing that it wouldn't be any better if he refused, so he
grabbed the bottom of his white, short sleeved gym shirt and pulled
it off over his head. "Oh my God," the nurse gasped.

Danny looked at the
stunned faces of his nurse, teacher, and principle. "Danny," Mr.
Lancer breathed, "how did you become like this?" He gestured
towards his torso that was mottled with scars.

"Now Danny, I need to
know if someone's been hurting you so that we can do something
about it. Are there problems at home?" the Mrs. Ishiyama asked
tentatively.

Danny narrowed his eyes
in anger, gripping his shirt tighter so that his knuckled turned
white. "You think my parents did this?" he asked furiously. He
spoke again before they could say anything, "They may be slightly
crazy, and not all there all the time, but they're good parents!
They'd never hurt me."

"We know that Danny,
we just needed to ask. But we'd really like to know how you got
like this," the nurse said, pity in her eyes.

"I don't need your
pity," Danny said angrily, seeing it in the woman's eyes. "And
I still can't tell you."

"Do you have scars
all over?" Mr. Lancer asked, slightly fearing the answer.

"Yes," Danny
answered. He pulled up his pant leg to reveal more healed scars on
his calf. "Now if that's all that you need to know, I'd like
to get back to class." He dropped his pant leg and put his shirt
back on. He walked out of the nurse's office and down the hall,
Mr. Lancer hot on his trail.

"You know, Danny
we're going to have to call your parents about this. I'm sure
they don't know about this," he said, walking up beside the still
infuriated young man.

"And I won't have a
way to explain it, Mr. Lancer, so I suggest you drop the subject
right now," Danny said, not looking up at the teacher. They
arrived back at the class and walked in, Danny returning to his seat,
not missing the whispers about him as they had entered.

"All right class,"
Mr. Lancer said, walking up to the whiteboard. "Open your books up
to page…" Danny tuned the rest of the class out as he stared
blankly at his book.

A piece of folded paper
flopped into his vision, coming from his right where Sam sat. He
carefully unfolded the note and read it:

What happened?

It read in her curly
scrawl. He wrote back:

Tell you at lunch.

In his sloppy, boyish
writing. He folded the note back up silently and passed it back to
her.

Danny's day pretty
much went downhill from there. He got stares wherever he went. He
talked about what happened with Lancer, but Sam and Tuck had no good
advice for such a situation, and then in his last class, 15 minutes
before the day was over, his ghost sense went off.

Oh shit, Danny
thought, groaning. He raised his hand and was excused to the
bathroom. He ran into the boy's bathroom down the hall, checking
to make sure that it was empty before going ghost. He flew through
the wall of the school and out into the open air. He looked around,
trying to find the ghost when he was slammed from behind with a net,
and sent to the ground.

He heard laughter
behind him and turned his head around to see through the glowing
green net. Skulker floated above him, grinning maliciously down at
him. "Well, ghost child, are you ready to adorn my floor with your
pelt?" he asked, the grin never leaving his face.

"No amount of therapy
will ever make this moment okay," he murmured to himself. To
Skulker, he said, "No matter how many times I hear that, I'm
never going to get used to the fact that you want my skin on your
floor."

"I will have you
whelp!" Skulker yelled.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah,"
Danny muttered, phasing into the ground and out of the net. He came
up out of the ground, fist raised, and punched Skulker under his jaw,
sending him flying up higher. They exchanged blows, Danny denting
Skulker's ecto-suit, and Skulker cutting Danny across his shoulder,
thigh and side, all the cuts bleeding green ecto-blood.

Danny was faintly aware
of the school bell ringing, and kids rushing out of the school, only
to stop suddenly when he was sent flying into the ground, creating a
crater. The students stood petrified, watching the as the battle
waged on.

Blow after blow,
Skulker and Danny were growing tired, but neither stopped. Danny
punched Skulker into the ground, grabbed the Fenton Thermos off of
his belt and sucking up the offending ghost.

Once the thermos was
capped, Danny promptly fell to the ground, face buried in the grass
as faint yells of his name in his ears before he blacked out.

Sam and Tucker ran over
to Danny's limp form. They had watched from the sidelines,
watching as Danny slowly ran out of energy. They watched him fall to
the ground. Sam dropped down onto her kneed by Danny's side, and
placed her hands on his back, shaking his slightly from side to side,
repeating his name over and over in an attempt the get him to wake
up.

Suddenly, the two
blueish white rings appeared around his form, changing him back from
Phantom to Fenton. Sam heard gasps around her and looked up. The
students were still by the school, watching as she and Tucker were
trying to wake up the ghost boy. She looked around and saw news
cameras, apparently there to capture the ghost attack. Sam's eyes
grew wide as she looked at the news cameras. She's hand shot out
and latched onto Tucker's upper arm, emitting a squeak of pain from
him. He looked up from his fallen friend and looked at the shocked
Sam, only to follow her gaze to the cameras.

Everything, it had
seemed, for the past few minutes, was in pause. No one moved or said
a word. Suddenly, like someone had hit the play button, all hell
broke lose. The camera crew rushed over to get a better look at the
'ghost boy' who appeared to be human also. The students rushed
forward as well, gathering around the fallen Fenton, everyone
recognizing him.

Sam and Tucker shared a
panicked look and put more effort into waking Danny up. Sam shook
him harder, not attempting to roll him over and expose his face to
the cameras. Sam smiled as she got a groan out of him. Everyone
instantly backed up from the boy, scared looks plastered onto their
faces.

Danny pushed himself up
onto his knees, holding his head. He shook his head slightly to
clear it and looked around. He noted all of the scared looks being
directed towards him. His eyes grew wide, remembering the fight with
Skulker and blacking out. He looked down at himself and noticed that
he was back in his human form. His eyes grew even wider. His wounds
were still bleeding slightly a florescent green.

He looked towards Sam
asking her a silent question. She answered by bowing her head. He
turned towards Tucker, who gave him the same response and then looked
behind Danny. Danny turned to see what he was looking at to see the
news cameras.

He instantly grabbed
onto Sam and Tucker, phasing them into the ground and out of the site
of the cameras. He didn't even bother to go ghost. They
reappeared in the park, far away from the school.

Danny was panting
heavily from the exertion. "Dude, this isn't good," Tucker
said, breaking the silence.

"No kidding Tucker,"
Sam said angrily. She glared as said boy, but turned away from him
and turning towards Danny. Her expression instantly softened. "We
need to get those cuts looked at Danny."

He nodded, his
breathing slowed down as he regained himself. "We should probably
go to my house," he said, his voice no more than a whisper.
"Besides, it's probably past time to tell my parents." Sam's
heart swelled with pride. She was proud of Danny that he was going
to tell his parents.

He grabbed back onto
them, going ghost in the process, and flying them invisibly to his
house. He stopped outside his house, taking deep breathes, preparing
himself for what he was about to face. He felt two hands on his back
and looked between Sam and Tucker, both of them reassuring him that
they'd be there for him.

He smiled at them,
getting strength from them, and walking up the steps to his house.
He pushed open the front door to see both his parents, sitting on the
couch, watching the news. Their attention turned towards the door as
it opened. Maddie instantly jumped up and ran to her son, giving him
a hug.

"Oh Danny, you're
all right!" she cried, hugging him to her. She finally released
him to look at him. "You're hurt!"

"You're not mad?"
he asked. "That I've been lying to you these past four years?"
He looked up at her.

"Of course not
sweetheart!" she said, hugging him again, but not as bone crushing.
"I feel so terrible trying to capture you and dissecting you!"

"That's right son!"
Jack said, joining the conversation. "You're a ghost hunter! We
couldn't be more proud!"

Danny smiled at his
dad's reaction, typical Jack Fenton. He looked back at Sam and
Tucker who were smiling at him. He smiled back and back out of his
mother's hold. "I need to get these cuts looked at," he said,
motioning to the wounds from the brush with the rest of his death.

"Alright, but we're
going to have to talk about some things afterwards, alright?"
Maddie asked her son. He nodded in response.

"I'll take care of
him Mrs. Fenton, I've had a lot of practice dealing with him
hurting himself," Sam said. Maddie smiled at her.

"Though, I can't,
I've gotta get home," Tucker said, looking at his watch. "And
my parents will also probably want an explanation." He waved them
goodbye before darting out of the house and down the street.

"All right, come on
Danny," Sam said, grabbing his hand and dragging him up to his
bathroom. She set him on the toilet and told him to strip down to
his boxers.

"What!" he asked,
blushing profusely.

"Come on Danny, I
can't get to the one on your leg if you're still in your pants,
and besides it's too much different than seeing you in your
swimsuit!" Sam said impatiently.

"Alright, alright!"
he said, quickly striping down to his boxers, the blush never leaving
his face and growing a couple shades darker. Sam chuckled at him,
pushing down the urge she had to kiss him senseless right then.

As she cleaned the cut
on his shoulder, staring at it intently, Danny spoke up. "What am
I going to do about school tomorrow? Everyone knows my secret!" he
sighed dejectedly.

"We'll tackle that
when it comes the time, but just concentrate on getting better right
now," Sam told him.

"But what are they
going to think! I'm a freak Sam! A freak!"

"Danny!" Sam said
angrily, staring into his eyes. "Stop it. You're no different
now than you were then! Of course people are going to treat you
differently, but that's just because people stupidly fear things
that they don't understand. So stop beating yourself up about
something that you couldn't control."

"What are friends
for? Tuck and I won't abandon you just because your secret is
out." Sam graced him with a rare smile. He turned back towards
her, locking eyes with her. All time seemed to stop again. They
drifted off into their own world, each drawing closer to the other
until their lips locked. It was a short kiss, but it spoke volumes.
They broke apart and stared at each other again, smiling. "Not a
fake-out make-out I'm hoping," Sam said.

"No way in hell,"
Danny replied. He kissed her again and broke away so that she could
tend to the rest of his wounds.

Once properly bandaged,
they both headed downstairs to where his parents were sitting in the
kitchen. They sat opposite of them, Danny taking a deep breath to
steady him.

"Alright, Danny, I
got a call from Mr. Lancer earlier today to say that you were covered
in scars. Are you?" Maddie asked, dreading the answer. Her son
nodded, moving the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal the scars along
his forearm.

"My whole body's
like this," he said.

"How did this
happen?" Jack asked, interested in how his son was the ghost boy,
acting serious and out of character. Danny told them about how the
lab accident hadn't just electrocuted him, about how it had half
killed him, making him half ghost, half human, or a halfa to the
ghost world. He answered his mom's and dad's questions, Sam
putting some information in here and there, adding details that he
was fuzzy on.

They talked until Sam
said she had to go home. She bid farewell and walked back to her
house. Danny and his parents talked further into the evening,
talking about his adventures and battles, and his enemies, leaving
out the fact that Vlad was a half ghost too, until Danny started
yawning.

His parents shuffled
him off to bed, where he stripped down to his boxers and fell onto
his bed, falling asleep right away.

The next morning
sunshine shone in his face, waking him from his peaceful sleep. His
alarm clock next to him shrieked into life, he hit the power button
and rose from his bed, stretching. He proceeded to his bathroom
where he quickly took a shower and hung a towel from around his
waist.

He walked back to his
bedroom to see Sam in his room and Tucker climbing into his window.
"AH!" he yelled, his towel almost dropping, but he grabbed it at
the last second and secured it more tightly around his waist. "What
are you two doing here?" he asked them, water dripping down his
nose from his hair, his face flushed from only being in a towel.

Sam finally noticed him
and was about to answer when she noticed his attire, blushed, and
turned quickly around. Tucker had finished pulling himself into the
room by then and said, "You've got about a million reporters in
front of your house right now, and I'm so glad that your window
points to the backyard, otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to
get in."

"Well, we could fly
invisible to school and let your parents deal with the reporters with
the Fenton AntiCreep Stick," Sam said, not turning around as she
said it.

Tucker looked at her
funnily and started to laugh. "I think we should let you get
dressed before Sam here has a nose bleed. Come on Sam," he said,
pulling her out of Danny's room.

Danny was left in
there, scratching his head. He quickly dressed and exited his room,
finding Sam and Tucker downstairs with his parents, telling them
their plan of action. They seemed rather pleased to use the Fenton
AntiCreep Sticks to get rid of some pesky reporters.

"Here," Sam said,
extending her hand, and handing him a backpack. "You left it at
school yesterday."

He smiled at her and
kissed her on the cheek murmuring, "Thanks," before he left.

"Did I miss
something?" Tucker asked looking between the two, noting that
neither blushed at the kiss.

"Well, you had to
leave yesterday, so yeah," Danny said, smiling as he slipped his
hand into Sam's and intertwined their fingers.

"Yep," Tuck said,
not denying the fact, "on whether you'd be together before the
end of high school. In fact…I've got a lot more bets to collect
on!" Danny and Sam sighed.

"How did your parents
take the news?" Danny asked.

"Well, my parents
kept on ranting about my safety and wanted to get a new restraining
order, but when I mentioned that you wouldn't like it very much and
might do something drastic, then they gave up on the idea," Sam
said sighing.

"Gee, thanks, I
really appreciate you using me as a threat," Danny said dully. Sam
just smiled in answer.

"My parents have
known you since we were little Danny, they know you're a good kid,"
Tucker added. Danny smiled and grabbed onto Tucker, his hand still
holding Sam's, going ghost and phased them through the roof. He
turned them invisible, and flew them over the sea of reporters and
headed to school.

Jack and Maddie watched
their son transform and take his friends to school. "That's
going to take some getting used to," Maddie sighed.

"Yeah, but now we can
help Danny fight all those ghosts!" he said excitedly. "Any
maybe test a few inventions!" Maddie gave him a pointed glare.
"Or not…"

Danny flew them to the
side of the school and changed back, making them all visible. They
walked around to the front and Danny took a deep breath before
climbing the stairs and pushing the doors open.

The trio walked into
school, Danny in the middle with Sam on his right, holding hands with
their fingers intertwined, and Tucker flanking his left. The whole
hall quieted down as he entered, whispers sent throughout the hall
alerting others of his presence. As they walked forward, the
students parted, making a path down the middle of the hall.

Danny went to his
locker, grabbed his needed books before closing it. "Hey Fentoad!"
a yell came down the hall. Danny turned to see Dash walking towards
him. "You think you're so tough just because you're a ghost!"
he accused.

"No, I don't, and
I'm not full ghost. I'm part human, part ghost," Danny
corrected.

"Yeah, well, that
makes you even more of a freak, Freak!"

Dash had expected many
reactions out of Danny, but not this one. Danny started to laugh.
When he regained himself, he said to Dash, "Thanks for the
familiarity."

Dash just looked at him
with a confused expression as he walked away to his first class.
"You see?" Sam said. "I told you that you're still the
same."

"Yeah, I guess you're
right," Danny said, smiling and placing a feather light kiss onto
Sam's lips. Their bliss was broken by a smacking sound. They both
turned towards Tucker who had his hand held to his forehead.

"I can't believe
that I forgot! And I just learned it this morning! I gotta go
collect my bets!" Tucker said, dashing down the hall. Danny and
Sam watched him leave, laughing at his retreating form.

"I'd say he
needs to treat us to something because of that," Sam said, laughter
in her voice and eyes.

"Definitely," Danny
agreed. He was in heaven right now. Maybe things wouldn't be so
bad.

But then again, never
test Mr. Murphy. Because right after he thought that thought, a
perky voice called down the hall with a slight Hispanic accent, "Oh
Danny!" Paullina sauntered her way over to Danny, completely
ignoring Sam, who just happened to be holding onto Danny's hand and
was right behind him.

"Paullina," Danny
replied dryly. This girl who'd constantly ignored him all
throughout high school now wanted his attention because he was the
ghost boy.

"Do you wanna do
something with me tonight?" she asked, slinking up to him, making
him take a step back.

"No," he said
flatly, not trying to hide his annoyance.

"But, why not?
You've pined over me all through high school!" she whined,
clearly not used to being rejected.

"Actually, I got over
you in sophomore year, but that's beside the point. Sam's my
girlfriend now," he said a-matter-of-factly.

Sam gaped at him,
flushing as he called her his girlfriend. She looked towards
Paullina, seeing her horror stricken face. An evil smirk graced her
lips as she stood on her tip toes and kissed Danny on the cheek
before resting her head on his shoulder. "I thought it'd be
obvious," Sam said, wrapping her free arm around his waist and
resting it on his stomach.

Danny mentally laughed
at Paullina's face. He placed his hand over Sam's and stroked
the back of it lightly with his fingers. He turned away from
Paullina and faced Sam, kissing her lightly on the lips before they
both entered Mr. Lancer's English class.

"Miss Manson, Mr.
Fenton, I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that right in front of
my class and waited until you're out of school to involve yourself
in such activities," Mr. Lancer said from behind his desk.

Sam and Danny sat in
their usual seats, hands still intertwined. "That was some good
clean up you did out there boyfriend," Sam said, putting
emphasis on the last word. Danny smiled sheepishly at her and
squeezed her hand lightly. She smiled back at him.

Ok, don't curse me
Mr. Murphy, but today's going to be a good day, except for those
reporters, but oh well, we'll tackle them when the time comes,
he thought to himself. Yep, it's definitely going to be a good
day.

-----------------

Murphy's Law (AKA
Mr. Murphy): Anything bad that can happen in any given situation will
happen in said situation.

I hope you liked it!
It came out a LOT longer than I originally thought! And this is a
whole lot longer than an essay that I had to write for my English
class. It's so sad… Please read and review!

The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.